CEREMONIAL CEREMONIAL ORIGINS ORIGINS CLOSING CLOSING IN IN ON ON 100 100 YEARS YEARS and danced with the other New Mexico tribes. The event was designed along the established lines like the first state fair held in New York in 1841. Since the organizers were promoting New Mexico Territory as a place ripe for business development and investment, it was called the Mining and Industrial Exposition. There were all sorts of displays and entertainments and the New Mexico Natives were a large part of it, involving most of the tribes in the Territory, minus some Apaches from
the South. The Apache chief apologized explaining they were on the warpath at the time and couldn’t take time out for a celebration. In 1887 Buffalo Bill Cody started his Wild West Show. A little more than a decade later, there were more than 100 similar shows and circuses traveling around the United States and Europe featuring Indian performances. Though there has been endless controversy about this phenomenon, most of the Indians who joined these attractions were happy to get away from the boredom and poverty of the land the government had put them on. In Montana the Crow Fair was launched in 1904, complete with rodeos, parades, and native dances. An unpopular Navajo Agent started the Annual Shiprock Fair in 1909, exhibiting produce, livestock, and one of the best collections of Navajo weaving ever seen. This gathering has always been credited as the first Navajo Fair, but there is an interesting omission here. Rebecca and
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tate and County fairs were local adaptations of the popular World Fairs and Expositions. These fairs were immensely popular, probably because of the scope of them. They went on for three to six months and even longer and featured everything new under the sun. Mainly they gave bragging rights to the sponsoring country. At one fair the famous Geronimo was autographing photos of himself. For the Great Columbian Exposition of 1910, the Santa Fe Railroad built an entire multistory Pueblo. In 1883 Frank Cushing, the eccentric anthropologist who lived with the Zunis, took a group of those Pueblos to Santa Fe to take part in the so-called “Tertio Millennial” —the three hundred and thirtythird birthday of the city. The Zunis ran
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